


Let the Shadows Fall Behind You

by ThatFeanorian



Series: To Build The Bonds That Tie [2]
Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Curufin as "Junior", Curufin has dyslexia, Curufin isn't feeling that, Elementary school bullying, Family Feels, Family Fluff, Family in general, Learning Disabilities, Maedhros being a mom, Modern Era, anger management issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-22
Updated: 2020-04-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:08:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23790586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatFeanorian/pseuds/ThatFeanorian
Summary: Curufin is smarter than all his brothers, and he knows it, so why doesn't the English language make sense? A snippet of 7-year-old Curufin struggling with undiagnosed dyslexia and not wanting to deal with Maedhros being a mother hen.Title from Rhianna's song "Towards the Sun"
Relationships: Caranthir | Morifinwë & Curufin | Curufinwë, Curufin | Curufinwë & Fëanor | Curufinwë, Curufin | Curufinwë & Maedhros | Maitimo
Series: To Build The Bonds That Tie [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1710157
Comments: 1
Kudos: 36





	Let the Shadows Fall Behind You

**Author's Note:**

> The ages in this piece are:  
> Curufin is 7  
> Maedhros is 16  
> Maglor is 14  
> Caranthir is 9

Some days (weekends) Junior wakes up feeling happy and excited. These are the days when his father teaches him, helps him with his homework, walks with him all the way around Lake Mithrim which rests cool and blue behind their house. Other days (weekdays) Junior wants nothing more than to burrow ao far under his covers that no one will ever be able to find him again. The days when he has to go to lunch and recess where people laugh at him for reading and steal his food.

It isn’t that he cares about the people who laugh (he will not admit he cares), he knows that they are children and therefore --in his father’s words-- ‘prone to fits of the most disgusting kind of malignancy’. Junior isn’t exactly sure what that means, but he knows that those kids are bad. 

“Junior,” they say, “That means you’ll never be grown-up and good at things.” Even this, however much it smarts to have such insults thrown at his face, would be bearable, even laughable if it weren’t true. Celegorm and Caranthir can threaten all they want, can rant about the stupidity and ignorance of those children all they want, but they cannot change reality.

And the reality is that all those insults are true. Every day in school Maedhros looks over Junior like a statue of a god, watching his every movement. It is Maedhros who came first, leaving behind an example that demands to be met and surpassed if he ants to be worthy of the attention his parents lavish on him. The teachers say that Junior is wonderful: such a quiet, attentive, smart child --his mother smiles, his father nods as if they already know this is true-- but they do not call him the best, because they know he is not. 

In most things, he can easily surpass his brothers: Language, Art, Social Studies, Science, in Math he is second only to Caranthir, who has surpassed even Maedhros though he is only ten, yet in English Junior struggles. The letters on the page made sense: there is a pattern and a reason behind each one that has been well explained to him, but when he is asked to read the words or to write, Junior can’t do it. The sounds get all jumbled up in his mind and when he tries to put them down on the page the cacophony of sound gets in the way and all that comes out is a mess of nonsense that should make sense but doesn’t. He cannot understand it; he can see the pattern, so why don’t the pieces fit together to give him a solution?

His father has tried to explain it to him, as have his mother, Maedhros, and Maglor, but none of their explanations told him anything the teachers hadn’t already. This leaves him with only one explanation: that there must be something wrong with him, a glitch in the system that will not let him fully live up to the image of Maedhros, and before him, his father. He is meant to stay small and unworthy, a shadow following in his family’s footsteps but never catching up.

Junior walks home in the windy September air with Caranthir, who ignores him the entire way. His brother has headphones on and is blasting his music so loudly that even if Junior were to shout, Caranthir probably would not hear him. He counts the steps as they walk, dragging his feet over the concrete and leaving scuff marks on his shoes, which are too small and pinch at the toes. Caranthir doesn’t notice, only tells him to walk faster, forgetting that his legs are so much longer than Junior’s.

“I can’t,” He complains and Caranthir scowls at him, talking much louder than usual because of the music in his ears,

“Can’t hear you, come on Junior, hurry up!” Junior slumps forwards, his thoughts even heavier than his legs feel, and even though his backpack is nearly empty, it too feels like the weight of the world is on his shoulders.

The paper had been one of the few pieces of writing he had been proud of, short but nonetheless his best work so far. He had written about mechanics and about his dreams of building rocketships for the astronauts to travel in. He had turned it over to his teacher, grinning with pride and anticipation of finally receiving a sticker, but all he had gotten back had been red mards, his large messy handwriting crossed out over and over again and small notes written in the margins, telling him everything he had done wrong. Junior’s steps falter as he remembers it, and the frown already implanted on his features deepens into an all-out scowl. 

Red is supposed to be a happy colour, the colour of home and his father. It does not make sense that his teacher chose to break his heart in red. He glares at the pavement and kicks a stone. His shirt today is red; Junior decides he will never wear it again.

Maedhros looks up from his homework, brow crumpled, as they walk into the house, Caranthir dumping his school bag on the floor with a thump. He has a lot more school work in fifth grade than Junior does in the second, and once again Junior feels more like a shadow or a ghost than a real person as his bag drops beside Caranthir’s without a sound.

“Hey you two, snack is on the counter. How was school?” Sometimes Junior forgets Maedhros is not his third parent. He is so much older than Junior and his mother and father have always been so busy with work. More often than not, it has been Maedhros who puts them to sleep and Junior used to love nothing more than to curl up on his lap and listen to his soft calm voice read at night. He used to tell Maedhros all of his dreams of building machines to take people into space and to travel around the world in a minute. Now he is silent as he grabs a few apple slices and pulls a book from the shelf to read at the table, leaving Caranthir to respond,

“It was fine,” and promptly vanish up the stairs to his bedroom, backpack in hand once again. Maedhros’ face falls for a moment as he watches Caranthir leave, but upon noticing Junior watching him, he pins an altogether too vibrant smile back onto his face. He returns to his homework and Junior opens his book, eyes glued to the page and the words that make no sense. By the time Maedhros lets out a grunt of frustration and throws his pencil down, Junior has only read one page and wants more than anything to burn the useless pile of pages and cry.

He can’t cry twice in one day, though, that would only prove his inferiority. Maedhros stands and walks over to Junior’s school bag, carrying it over to the table, no doubt to empty it out, and Junior stiffens in his seat, hiding behind the unread book in an attempt to escape the inevitable discovery of his failure. Maedhros pulls out his lunch bag and dumps the pile of wrappers and plastic bags that remain inside it into the trash, returning the empty bag to his backpack only to pull out the white sheet of lined paper covered in pencil and red ink. Maedhros looks up curious, and seeing Junior’s frightened upset eyes already on him, he frowns,

“What’s this Junior?” He asks, and Junior cringes backwards in his seat, glaring up at his elder brother,

“It’s my writing assignment.” He says angrily and Maedhros moves to take a seat next to him, placing the sheet of paper between them. Junior’s eyes cannot seem to look away from it, and Maedhros makes a soft indefinable sound in the back of his throat, clearly unphased by Junior’s display of fierceness.

“You’re clearly upset, Curvo, what happened?” Belatedly, Junior realises that he has betrayed too many of his emotions. ‘Curvo’ is a name reserved for when he is truly upset.

“I don’t know,” He bursts out, after all, if Maedhros already knows what use is there in holding back? “I thought it was really good, we were supposed to be writing about something we liked to do so I wrote about building things with Dad, but I guess I just messed everything up again.”

“Was there a specific correction that made you angry?” Maedhros asks gently, and Junior hates how calm he is, hates how superior he acts because he doesn’t know. Perfect Maedhros has never done anything wrong in his whole life,

“I hate all of it.” He says spitefully, then relents slightly deigning to point to the short note at the end of his writing. The red ink reads,

“Try to write more Junior, I know you can.”

“Okay,” Maedhros replies placing his hand on Junior’s shoulder, “Can you tell me why?” Junior blushes,

“We were supposed to write five sentences.” He mumbles, the words coming out fast and low so that Maedhros has to ask him to repeat it. Glancing back to the page, Maedhros lets out a tired sigh, and Junior once again feels horribly unworthy of anything, of everything, and then Maedhros responds softly,

“And you wrote two.” He is not asking for confirmation. Junior nods glumly, glancing up to meet Maedhros’ puzzled gaze. The innocent bewilderment in her eyes brings Junior’s anger roaring back to the forefront of his mind and he kicks at the leg of the table angrily, pretending that it is Maedhros’ skin and not wood.

“Is there a reason you didn’t write more?” He asks and Junior scowls again, wishing he was old enough to have imitated Caranthir and disappeared upstairs. The sunny witch and gold kitchen is mocking him with its clean sparking surfaces and bright happy children’s drawings.

“No.,” he says because that is the truth. He doesn’t have a reason, he just couldn’t do it. Junior wants to retreat up to his bedroom where no one is asking questions and where he can hide with the little metal pieces his father gave him which assemble into a small statue of a horse when he puts them together correctly. There no one is judging him and trying to understand something he doesn’t have the words to articulate. But he can’t, because Maedhros is frowning in concentration and asking,

“You don’t have a reason? You just stopped for no reason?” Junior’s head hurts from trying to explain, but he hasn’t even begun. The sun is too bright, Maedhros is asking too many questions, and Junior can’t understand why he is so stupid that even his brother --who cannot do trigonometry-- doesn’t understand him. He buries his head in his hands, fists clenched, trying not to scream with frustration because his father has told him that is not an appropriate way of dealing with his problems,

“No! I tried, but when the words came out they were all messed up and the other kids finished early and they didn’t think it was hard. They hate me anyway and they laugh at me all the time because they know I’m stupid, so I thought maybe if I finished on time like them that even if my words were shorter it would be good enough and they wouldn’t tease me.” He is not quite yelling, but his voice is loud enough that Maedhros removes his hand from where it had been rubbing soothing circles over his spine,

“Junior, you’re not stupid. Just because you’re having trouble--” but Junior his finally has given up on holding back his anger and the tears come crashing out of his eyes like the twin waterfalls in the secret spot in the woods he shares with Celegorm,

“No, no, no no, NO, stop trying so hard to be mom and dad. You’ll never be them and --and I hate you! I hate everything! I will never be good at anything. Never, never, NEVER.” He yells, tears falling from his eyes in humiliation and anger. He ignores Maedhros’s look of shock and the hands that nevertheless reach out, trying to hold him. Junior pretends that those arms aren’t shaking slightly, he pretends he has not hurt his brother, but at that thought, he feels a burst of furious pride, and so he holds on to it.

He has hurt his brother. Junior. Now Maedhros will know what it feels like to be a ghost: Never quite enough to fill a whole person. He pushes back his chair, hearing it fall backwards with a bang, and runs up the stairs, slamming the door shut behind him. 

“Junior!” Maedhros calls after him, his voice still calm, though now it feels forced as he stands outside Junior’s door, gently speaking,

“Come on, open the door. You can’t just lock yourself in and expect the writing to go away. Please let me in?” Junior doesn’t respond, instead, kicking loudly at the door and then retreating to his bed to hide beneath the covers. He lets Maedhros stand beyond the dark wood and plead until his voice fades, and he is left alone beneath the blankets of his bed, trying to solve a problem with no solution. 

“Junior.” The voice is Maglor’s now and Junior sits up straight, still covered by his blankets,

“Go AWAY, I hate all of you.” He yells back, but an idea is forming in his mind, a slow bubble of hope that might just make him worth something. 

‘Junior’ is the name of a ghost, the name of a nothing, the name of a shadow. Junior will never be anything but half of what Curufin could be.

When he stomps down the stairs to dinner an hour later, Maedhros looks up with red eyes. He has been crying again. 

“Junior-” He begins but Curufin cuts him off with a glare,

“That’s a stupid dumb loser name,” he says firmly,

“I’m Curufinwë.”

**Author's Note:**

> Obviously, just changing his name does nothing. In the next 2 months, Maedhros explains to his parents what is going on and Fëanor connects Curufin with a neuropsychologist who does in fact diagnose him with dyslexia.


End file.
